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The Profit Optimization Playbook 

42 no cost, no risk ways to get more traffic, make more sales 

and increase the amount every customer spends with you 

Imagine that you’ve just bought a beautiful, lakeside mansion. It has 14 bedrooms, each 

with its own bathroom, situated on a 2 acre lot with the best view of the lake of any house in 

the area. 

The entire back of the house faces the lake with floor to ceiling glass walls. Your view out to 

the lake is unobscured and breathtakingly beautiful. Beyond the lake you can see a tall, 

magnificent mountain range. 

Each room in the house is impeccably appointed. The bedrooms all have custom paint, 

original works of art, bathrooms featuring marble imported from Italy, and oversized walk-in 

closets. Each could easily pass for a master suite. 

The gourmet kitchen is second to none, designed by a master chef, yet still warm and 

inviting. There’s a fully stocked wine cellar, temperature controlled with the latest state of the 

art equipment. And every other room in the house is of similar opulence. 

However, despite all that’s available to you in this house, which you’ve waited for decades 

to purchase, you live in only one room, the front room that you first encounter when you enter 

the house. 

There’s no explanation for this, really. You just live in that one room without much 

reasoning as to why you’ve chosen this particular behavior. 

Because you’ve never ventured into the other rooms, you have only the vaguest sense that 

you might be missing something. But in truth, you are denying yourself many advantages. 

You’re denying yourself the pleasure of pristine views and picture perfect sunsets over the 

lake nearly every day. You’re denying yourself the comfort of well-appointed bedrooms, loaded 

with every creature comfort you could ever ask for. 

You’re denying yourself the experience of cooking in a gourmet kitchen and the meals that 

result from this. You’re denying yourself access to some of the finest wine vintages in the 

world. And much more. 

In short you’re denying yourself the advantage of all these assets you worked so hard to 

build. 

So what the heck does all of this have to do with your real business? 

1 The Profit Optimization Playbook

The little fable I just created is an all too accurate description of how the vast majority of 

businesses operate. And let me be so bold to say that I’m nearly certain this is how your 

business operates too. 

You see, every business has dozens of assets (products, services, marketing, customer 

loyalty, reputation, etc.) that are severely underused or not used at all. So while all of these 

“rooms” of your marketing mansion are available to you, you’ve self-exiled your business to just 

a single room. But without any real reason for doing so. 

And what this report is all about is expanding your horizons. About moving into more of 

those profitable “rooms” available to you. About becoming the master and good steward of all 

the profit potential available to you in your business. About a very practical approach for 

increasing your profits exponentially by leveraging the assets you already have with no cost 

and no risk whatsoever. 

So in the rest of this report, I’m going to guide you through four important milestones: 

FIRST – beginning to see all of the profitable assets and opportunities that already exist in 

your business, but that you’re currently overlooking. 

SECOND – understanding a few fundamental principles behind why capitalizing on these 

assets is the fastest, easiest way to exponentially increase your profits. 

THIRD – why you only need to choose a small sub-set of the 42 assets you can potentially 

capitalize on in order to take your business to the next level, or even up many levels. 

FOURTH – because all of these assets already exist, how all of this can be achieved with no 

cost and no risk whatsoever. 

So let’s re-enter the real world your business operates in and I’ll show you exactly how all of 

this is done. 

A few fundamental principles 

There is a tremendous amount of money to be made in optimizing the profits of your 

business assets – plus its great fun to do. But it does take an understanding of all the options 

available to be able to select the strategies that are the best fit for your business. 

Now, when I say “best fit”, what I mean is a small, select group of profit optimization 

strategies that will produce the most return for the least amount of effort. After all, with at 

least 42 different optimization strategies available, it would be counter-productive to try to 

implement them all. 

So in this report, I’m going to start by briefly showing you all 42 assets your business already 

has where profits can potentially be optimized. Then, I’ll give you a much deeper level of detail 

on optimizing the profits for 8 of these assets, so you can see the true potential you can gain for 

a small investment of time and effort. 


I’ll lay out the profit optimization strategies for these 8 assets primarily through real life 

examples of how I’ve applied them to my own business – and I’ll also include examples of other 

businesses I’ve taught how to do this. So within just short time, you’ll grasp the immediate and 

unlimited upside potential of optimizing your profits. And how it locks in reliable business 

growth and eliminates having to chase every new “marketing tactic of the week” that lands in 

your inbox. 

Before we look at all 42 assets that can be optimized, there are four fundamental principles 

to understand. 

Fundamental #1 – Your customer list is the most important and most valuable asset you 

have. Nothing else even comes close. 

Fundamental #2 – Read the first point again. That’s how important it is. 

Fundamental #3 – Understanding your customer’s wants, needs and desires far better than 

your competitors do is the key to owning your market. 

Fundamental #4 – Trust is an incredibly valuable asset, second only to your customer list. 

Rather than explaining each of these fundamental points here from a theoretical 

standpoint, throughout this report I’ll give you actual examples of each point being applied in 

real life situations. 

So let’s dig in and I’ll show you exactly how to optimize your business assets to get more 

traffic, make more sales, increase the amount of every purchase your customers make, and tap 

into the vast profit opportunities you’re currently overlooking. And as icing on the cake, how to 

do all this with no cost and no risk whatsoever. 

First things first… what profit optimization is 

When most people hear the term “profit optimization”, they think of no more than two or 

three areas – usually their products, services and a limited amount of their marketing. But 

those areas are only a fraction of the assets you already have that can be optimized and made 

exponentially more profitable. So here’s the list of 42 different assets that can be optimized to 

produce far greater profits: 

Strategic 

 

 

 

Products 

Services 

Customer definition and segmentation 

Traffic 

 

Partnering 


Endorsements 

Buy unsold leads 

Clone marketing from other companies (same industry or different) 

Frankenstein ad creation 

Bonusing – give to all buyers of another company’s product 

Cost of Acquisition 

Referrals 

Conversion 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Series mailings – postal or email 

Strategic alliances (relationships and reputation) 

Endorsements 

Break-even or slight loss on first sale 

Partnering 

Events featuring similar services 

o Online or offline 

o Webinar/podcast series online 

Inside sales process and scripts 

Outside sales process and scripts 

Increase the amount of every sale 

 

 

 

 

Upsells 

Super levels – platinum, VIP 

Price testing 

Bundling 

Maximize customer retention and spending 

 

 

 

Back end – customer segregation and service 

VIP – customers only 

Reactivation 

Joint ventures 

 

 

Joint ventures for sales 

Joint ventures as test for creating new divisions or companies 

Proven marketing campaigns 

 

 

 

Ads 

Sales letters 

Web marketing pieces 


Videos 

Facebook and other social media ads 

Pay-per-click 

Marketing campaigns 

Banner ads 

Offers 

Membership sites 

 

 

Continuity 

Soft membership 

Other 

 

 

 

Business division cloning 

Satellite office / foreign rights 

Sell unsold leads 

That’s 42 types of assets you can optimize for greater profits – and this is just a partial list. 

There are actually many more depending on what specific type of business you’re in. 

Yet this list is far beyond what most people (including those who claim to be experts) think 

of as assets that have significant value. So this list alone should give you a pretty strong idea of 

why the profit optimization methods I’m about to show you are much different, much more 

expansive, and much more profitable than what you’ll find anywhere else on growing your sales 

and profits. 

Real world examples of profit optimization plays 

The best way to show you how profit optimization works, what real profit optimization 

plays look like, and the results some of these plays have produced is to share some of my own 

actual optimization projects and some of the optimization projects my students and clients 

have done. 

In these examples, you’ll notice that the profit increases range from a few thousand dollars 

to millions of dollars. So there is no way to state what the results of a typical profit optimization 

deal may be. 

More importantly, though, is that you’ll also see exactly how all profit optimization plays 

can be leveraged to multiply their value many times over. So a project that’s initially worth a 

few thousand dollars can be leveraged up to hundreds of thousands… and a project that’s 

worth hundreds of thousands can be leveraged up to millions. 

With this in mind, here’s a more detailed look at a number of actual profit optimization 

plays. And for each play, I’ll clearly label what type of asset is being optimized. 


Optimization Play #1 – Customer definition and segmentation 

As I mentioned above, the paramount rule for increasing your sales and profits is: 

Your customer list is the most important and most valuable asset you have. 

Nothing else even comes close. 

The flip side of this is that once you’ve made a sale, the worst thing you can do is ignore 

your existing customers while you focus on pursuing more and more new sales. Yet that is what 

the vast majority of people do. 

Need proof? Tell me right now, without doing any research, out of your entire email list, 

how many people on that list are paying customers and how many are prospects who have 

never bought anything? If you’re like 98% of all businesses, you don’t know those numbers. 

Let’s make it a bit easier. Again, without doing any research, out of your entire email list, 

what percentage of people on that list are paying customers and what percentage are 

prospects who have never bought anything? If you have a decent grasp of your business, you 

should be able to come closer on this one. But I can practically guarantee that you don’t know 

the answer to this either. 

What this means is that you’re leaving a lot of sales and profits on the table. And to make 

matters worse, if your competition is more customer focused than you are, you’re actually 

driving sales to them! 

You see, people like to buy from a source where they feel valued and wanted. But if you do 

nothing after making an initial sale, people will never feel valued and wanted. So the next time 

they’re in the market for what you sell, there’s very little chance they’ll buy from you again. 

So let me make a few recommendations for turning this around, creating customers who 

love you and refer business to you on a regular basis, and making substantially more sales 

simply by focusing more attention on your existing customers. 

Customer Optimization Strategy #1 – Your customers are the fastest, easiest source of 

more sales. 

The main reason it doesn’t make sense to favor chasing new business over focusing more 

attention on your existing customers is that there are no easier sales to make than additional 

sales to existing customers. 

More than 50 years of studies have shown that someone who bought from you once is as 

much as 10 times more likely to buy from you again as a prospect is to buy from you the first 

time. In addition, prospecting for new customers is always the most costly part of marketing, so 

it makes good sense to focus more attention on those sales that are easier and less expensive 

to make. 


Here’s why existing customers will always be the fastest, easiest source of more sales. The 

most difficult aspect of making a sale is gaining a person’s trust. People have been burned too 

many times by unscrupulous practices, especially online. So they are extremely reluctant to risk 

their money on an unproven source. 

But once you’ve made a sale and delivered on your promise, you’ve now gained that 

customer’s trust. And that trust can be leveraged to make more and more sales to those 

customers. Of course, these sales must be for items that are truly valuable to your customers or 

you’ll destroy the trust that was so difficult to gain. 

Customer Optimization Strategy #2 – Your customers would love it if you recommended 

other products and services to them. 

Here’s another powerful concept that most business owners and entrepreneurs don’t 

understand: your customers are actually hungry for you to recommend additional products and 

services to them. 

Without exception, whenever a customer buys a product or service, there are many 

additional products and services related to the original purchase that would be beneficial to 

your customer. But sorting through all the possible options available to them is a daunting task. 

If you approach a customer with recommendations for products or services that help them 

get better results from what they purchased in the first place – or enjoy what they purchased 

more – you simply can’t lose. You’ll make substantially more sales and increase the trust and 

appreciation your customers have for you even more. 

One of the finest examples I can give you of this is Amazon.com. Amazon knows from my 

buying behavior that I like historical novels. So every few weeks (about the time it takes to read 

a book), I receive recommendations for historical novels I might enjoy. 

I’d estimate that one out of 3 or 4 times, I buy one or more of the books Amazon is 

recommending. If it’s only one out of 4 times, that’s still a 25% increase in sales, just for sending 

me an email. And my appreciation of Amazon and my loyalty as a customer grows with every 

purchase. 

Any business can do this. Do you sell specialty shoes? When a customer buys a pair, why not 

follow up a few days later with an offer for the same shoe or a similar shoe in a different color? 

Or gel insoles that will make wearing the shoes even more comfortable. Or shoe racks, inserts 

or protective cases that will make a pair of shoes easier to store and last longer? 

Selling more to your existing customers is easy and very profitable. If you aren’t taking 

advantage of these sales, you’re unnecessarily leaving a lot of money on the table. 


Customer Optimization Strategy #3 – In order to capitalize on this, the first thing you 

MUST do is split your list into two separate segments: (1) customers who have bought 

something from you; and (2) prospects who have not bought anything. 

OK, so at first, it may look like this point should come before #2. However, in order for you 

to understand why this point is so important, and so necessary, I wanted to show you how 

much value there is in selling more to your existing customers. 

Now, it’s obviously easier to do that when you segment your list into two categories. At 

minimum, you should have one list that’s made up exclusively of customers who have actually 

bought something and a second list of prospects who have not yet purchased anything. 

Makes sense so far, right? Now, here’s the counterintuitive part of this. As much as 80% of 

all your marketing effort should be devoted to selling more to your existing customers and only 

20% of your effort should focus on converting prospects to paying customers. 

Why? Because only 1% to 5% of all the prospects you attract will ever convert to paying 

customers. Conversely, with regularly scheduled offers to paying customers, you can often 

make more sales to 50% of them or more over a period of 6 to 12 months. 

However, this is clearly not the way most businesses operate. They devote the bulk of their 

attention, usually 95%, to attempting to find and convert prospects to paying customers. This is 

extremely costly, highly ineffective – and to put it diplomatically, an enormous waste of time, 

money and effort. 

Once you shift to devoting a far greater percentage of your marketing efforts to selling 

more to your existing customers by offering them advice and items they truly value, your sales 

and profit will grow rapidly. And with no cost, no risk and far less effort. 

Customer Optimization Strategy #4 – In order to optimize your profits, you must create 

special offers that are available only to your paying customers. 

How do you get your customers to buy more from you? Two ways. 

First, by being of greater service and greater value to them. Second, by creating special 

offers that are available only to those customers and no one else. These two things go hand-inhand. 

When you create a special offer that is available only to existing customers, you show that 

you are giving them the care and attention they deserve. This in itself is being of greater 

service. 

To extend that concept of being of service even further, tell your customers precisely why 

this offer is only available to them. Some of the concepts you can use are: 

 

You are a loyal customer and I want to reward your loyalty with a special discount that 

isn’t available to anyone but our customers 


You are a loyal customer and I want to reward you with this item that will make what 

you purchased more effective (or more enjoyable… or extend its life… or easier to use… 

or whatever the benefit may be) 

We love our customers and I want to show that. Please accept this offer of this special 

product at a deeply discounted price. We were only able to get our hands on 90 of 

these, so we are only telling our loyal customers about this. Please do NOT share this 

with anyone else. 

As a way of thanking you for being a loyal customer, we’re making a special pre-sale 

offer. Since our supply of this item is limited, we want to make it available to our 

customers for 10 days before letting anyone else know about it. 

This special VIP package is available to our loyal customers only. Not only will you get 

this product at a discount we don’t make available to anyone else, but you also get our 

concierge level service and training, which normally runs $200, at no extra cost. 

These are just a few starter ideas. Use them to stimulate ideas for offers that are best suited 

to your own products and services. Your customers will appreciate you and buy more. And your 

sales and profits will grow with minimal time and effort. 

Customer Optimization Strategy #5 – Knowing exactly who your customers are can 

multiply your profits with no additional cost or effort. 

In any business, the more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them. 

And the better you serve them, the more your sales will grow. 

You should create as complete a profile of your ideal customer as you can. What percentage 

of your customers are male and what percentage are female? What age range do the majority 

of your customers fall into? How much education do they have? Do they own their home or 

rent? 

What industries are the bulk of your customers from? What are their job titles? How much 

do they earn? What do they get from using your product? What problem does it solve for them 

or what important goal does it help them achieve? Plus whatever else is pertinent to customers 

buying your products or services. 

Once you know exactly who your customer is, you can tailor your marketing messages to 

them… you can more easily identify the best sources of more prospects just like them… you can 

create new products and services that fit their needs perfectly… and much more. 

Here’s a powerful example of how to use this knowledge that any business can duplicate. 

I’ve changed the industry somewhat to protect my client’s advantage in that industry, but that 

doesn’t change how this was used and the results it’s produced. 

I have a client who sells a unique, highly effective and high priced set of exercise equipment. 


After reviewing his customer records to determine if there were any traits of his customers that 

could be used to optimize his profits, my client reported that the bulk of his business came from 

two different customer types. 

The first type was females from 18 to 45 who wanted to stay model slim without developing 

bulky muscles. The other type was just the opposite – male power lifters who wanted to pack 

on the muscle while dramatically reducing the risk of injury from lifting extremely heavy 

weights. 

The problem was that the appeal to both of these markets was very different and because 

my client’s marketing focused primarily on weight loss, he made twice as many sales to the 

female segment of his business as he did to the male power lifters. So I suggested that he 

create separate divisions of his company to sell the same product. We even gave each division 

its own distinct name. 

Now when people visit his web site, they choose from the options of, “Looking to stay 

model slim without looking over muscular?” or “Want to pack on layers of highly defined 

muscle without any risk of injury from lifting heavy weights?” 

Based on which option they click, they are taken to the web pages for that division of the 

company. And while the equipment is identical, the benefits that the web pages for each 

division focus on are completely different. 

So how well did applying this customer knowledge do? In its first month, simply by breaking 

the business out into two separate divisions, each with its own copy appeal, profits increased 

by 40%. And that increase has been maintained for six years running. 

Optimization Play #2 – Relationships and reputation 

Many people know about the skateboard toy I created and licensed to a large toy company. 

But what really made this happen and got my toy on the shelves of major stores all over the 

world was a series of relationships. 

I originally invented the toy for my son who was an avid skateboarder. Once I made a crude 

model in my garage for the whopping investment of $21, I then emailed all my friends and 

neighbors asking if anyone knew someone who worked for any of the major skateboard brands. 

Because we live in San Diego, which is a hotbed for skateboarding, within 20 minutes, I 

received a reply from one of my neighbors telling me that his son went to school with the son 

of Chris Miller, one of Tony Hawk’s business partners. And he offered to make an introduction 

to Chris. 

I met with Chris and he really liked the toy and agreed to take a commission for helping me 

find a company to license it to. About a week later, we had an appointment to show my toy to a 

company that had licenses to use Tony Hawk’s name and branding on their toys as well as the 

branding of five other big skateboard brands. 


So think about this. How much easier do you think it made it to get an appointment with 

this toy company with Chris Miller making the initial contact instead of me? And how much do 

you think it boosted my credibility to walk in to the presentation accompanied by Tony Hawk’s 

partner rather than trying to beg for an appointment on my own? 

Obviously, leveraging this asset – Chris Miller’s reputation – and paying him a reasonable 

commission for the use of this asset, was a key factor in getting my licensing deal. And so was 

leveraging the relationships I have with friends and neighbors. 

But the leverage doesn’t stop there. Once my toy hit the market, I was contacted by a 

number of companies who wanted to pay for my help in getting their toys and other products 

to market. Now that I was known as the guy who licensed the Tony Hawk skateboard toy, my 

own reputation was a valuable asset that could be used to gain a share of any deal I assisted in. 

I’ve done this many times in many industries. Having friends or business associates 

introduce you to a respected expert in a given industry, then leveraging that expert’s reputation 

to land a sale, then leveraging the reputation you gain from your deal in that industry is 

something anyone can do. 

How this works for you. In the example I just described, I was completely unknown in the 

toy industry. And equally unknown in the many other industries where I’ve used this 

Optimization Play. But I quickly established a reputation as someone to rely on in multiple 

industries, primarily by leveraging the existing relationships I had with friends and business 

associates. 

Everyone has far more relationships that can be leveraged than they realize. All I did to 

benefit from my relationships was make a list of all the personal and professional relationships I 

had. Then I tapped into that list whenever I needed the leverage of someone else’s reputation 

to close a deal – and you can see how well this works. 

Optimization Play #3 – Inside sales process 

What one of my clients in Australia did with an inside sales process demonstrates how 

quickly and easily an asset can be optimized to generate substantial profits – additional profits 

you wouldn’t see without applying optimization strategies. 

His business offers a range of technical services to small businesses and relies on inside 

sales (sales made by someone sitting at a desk inside the business rather than an outside sales 

force), so he understands the inside sales process very well. 

When a friend mentioned he was having a new web site designed for $6,000 (a service my 

client’s business does not normally offer), my client offered to do the same job for $2,000. At a 

discount of 66%, his friend accepted the offer and made a deposit of $1,000 on the spot. 

Next, my client went out to a couple of web sites for freelance designers and found a 

designer with an excellent portfolio who would do the job for $500. Once the job was done, 


everybody was happy with the work, everybody benefited, and my client pocketed $1,500 for 

about two hours of work. 

What makes this strategy work is that while designers are very good at providing their 

services, they are horrible at selling them. So anyone can leverage their sales skills to act as a 

middle man like this and generate a lot of business. 

Taking this to the next level. Now, $750 per hour isn’t too shabby, but by applying a much 

more expansive optimization mindset to this, the profits could be increased exponentially. 

For starters, I recommended that my client charge $3,000 for the job, not $2,000. That’s still 

a very attractive discount of 50%, but it takes his profit from $750 per hour to $1,250 per hour. 

Next, I had him run ads in local media offering “Web design at half the cost delivered on 

time every time – or your money back”. One of the big problems with designers is they 

frequently fail to meet their deadlines. So I had my client screen designers for top ratings on the 

freelance sites and only work with designers who had 5 out of 5 star ratings for quality and 

delivery. 

I would also recommend giving the designer a $250 bonus for delivering the job on schedule 

– and penalize them $250 for not making the schedule. And I’d have a stable of 5 or more 

designers I could depend on all of the time. 

Expanding even further. So let’s apply our optimization mindset again and take this up 

another level. The next thing you could do would be to use this middle man process for other 

types of services. Just go to the web sites that broker freelance services, such as Elance, 

Guru.com and Odesk, and browse all the service categories. You could easily come up with 

another dozen categories to use this same process with. 

In addition, because this works best at a local level, you could then roll it out to as many 

cities as you like. You could do this using your own staff or you could create alliances with other 

companies similar to yours in other cities to use your system by licensing it to them for a 

retainer plus a percentage of the profits. 

Or you could create a training program showing other companies similar to yours – or even 

the freelance service providers – how to use your system to generate highly profitable projects. 

Here again, you could use your own staff to lead the training, license it to training professionals, 

license it to other business similar to yours, and much more. 

And we’re still not done. Take a look again at the list of the 42 different types of assets I 

gave you above. This exact same process can be used with many of those assets to create new 

divisions for your business with no cost and no risk. 

Are you beginning to see how there is an unlimited number of ways to optimize the profits 

of the assets you already have? The truth is, the sky is the limit once you adopt the expansive 

type of optimization mindset I’ve recommending here. 


Optimization Play #4 – Joint ventures 

Joint ventures are one of my favorite ways to optimize profits. I’ve personally made a 

tremendous amount of money and added tens of thousands of people to my list through 

carefully selected joint ventures. And when done properly, joint ventures can produce similar 

results for any business. 

Here’s why they work so well. Please pay particular attention to his, because it’s a critical 

concept the few businesses understand. That’s a shame because it is incredibly powerful and 

extremely simple at the same time. 

Once you’ve built a list of satisfied customers, you have far more than just a set of sales 

records. What you really have is an entirely new distribution channel. 

You see, a customer who buys your product also has many other needs related to that 

product. For example, let’s say you sell glasses designed to reduce eye strain for people who 

are on their computer for many hours each day. Those customers who buy your glasses have 

many other needs in addition to reducing eye strain. 

And here’s the important factor – not only do they have many other needs, but they would 

love to get a recommendation on those needs from a source who they trust. And if you’ve done 

a good job of delivering on your promise and earned your customers trust, they are more than 

open to any recommendations you have for them. 

They might want recommendations for devices to reduce carpal tunnel syndrome, back-up 

software, back-up hardware, anti-virus protection, surge protectors, office furniture – and on 

and on. This means that you can become a distribution channel for many of those things. 

All you have to do is approach companies that make quality products in those categories 

and offer to sell them to your list for a share of the profits, anywhere from 25% to 50%. Few 

companies would pass up this opportunity for free sales. 

Then, you can have those companies offer your product to their satisfied customers with 

the same terms for your deal. By doing joint ventures on a regular basis, you can actually make 

more money selling a multitude of other companies’ products than you make with your core 

products. 

Here’s another great example. Trust is a powerful factor, more powerful than most people 

realize. One of my favorite stories that illustrates this point is of a student of mine who was flat 

on his back in bed two days after surgery and as he puts it, “doped up on Vicodin”. 

Despite being nearly incapacitated, he was able to leverage the trust he had with one of his 

clients by making a quick phone call to recommend a joint venture deal with another one of his 

clients. Based on that call and very little additional effort, he was able to broker a deal that paid 

him $8,700 in commission while he was in bed recovering from surgery. All for 20 minutes of 

effort on his part. 


Now do you see how the power of trust has the ability to let you become a distribution 

channel to your customers for a wide range of products and services? 

Joint ventures are an exceptional way of generating profits with minimal time and effort. 

You can do them with your own products or broker deals for other companies just like my 

student did and collect a great commission on each deal. 

Plus, when a JV deal works once, it will always work again. This means that you can repeat 

the exact same deal multiple times every year. With this simple play alone, you can build 

automatically recurring profits into your business. 

Optimization Play #5 – Proven marketing campaigns 

This single strategy alone has made me millions of dollars. Yet it is extremely easy to use 

and there are so many variations to this that you’ll never run out of options. So let me show 

you how it works. 

If you are an ad agency, marketing consultant or copywriter, instead of charging a fixed fee 

to create a marketing campaign, you license the campaign to your client for a fraction of the 

fixed fee (around 10% of your normal fee) plus 20% of the profits your campaign produces. 

Don’t worry, if you are in any other type of business, I’ll show you how this play also applies to 

your business in just a minute. 

This does three important things. First, it reduces your client’s financial risk considerably. As 

a result of this, you can close far more business than you normally would. 

Second, when your campaign is successful, you can easily earn 3 to 10 times as much as you 

would if you charged a flat fee. For example, if your campaign produces $100,000 in profits, 

your share of that is $20,000. And if you normally charged $5,000 for that project, you’ve just 

multiplied your profits by 4 times. 

Third, with only minor modifications, you can license the same campaign to dozens and 

possibly even hundreds of clients. Now you have a proven asset that makes you money over 

and over again with barely any work. 

One of my clients used this strategy to bring in nearly $50,000 for just a few days of work 

the first time he switched from a flat fee model to my licensing model. This was 5 times as 

much as he would have made with a flat fee. 

Plus, his client was elated with the results. In just 7 days, they grew their subscriber base by 

187% and because the sales were for a membership site, monthly revenues increased by 380%. 

Why this strategy works so well. The strategy obviously works well for you because you can 

license the same marketing campaign over and over again to different businesses. But it also 

works extremely well for your client because they’re paying a fraction of what a campaign 


would normally cost up front and then the remainder is paid out of profits that are truly 

produced and in the bank. 

However, the real value for the client comes from knowing they’re using a marketing 

campaign with a proven track record, not a new campaign with a high likelihood of failure. So 

this is a winning combination for all. 

How to expand this strategy exponentially – and how it applies to any business, not just 

ad agencies, marketing consultants and copywriters. There are so many ways to expand this 

strategy that it’s mind boggling. Let me touch on a few. 

Expansion Point #1 – any marketing campaign that works in one industry can be 

transported to another industry. Here alone, you could leverage a marketing campaign for 

years without ever wearing it out. 

This approach can also be reversed. Regardless of what business you’re in, you can find 

marketing campaigns that work in related but different industries and license them for a 

fraction of what it would cost to create a marketing campaign from scratch. 

Why re-invent the wheel when there are so many opportunities to reproduce what’s 

already been proven to work? You could quickly have proven marketing bringing in new sales 

for your business and completely bypass all the development and testing time. 

Also, start paying close attention to all of your own marketing. Any marketing piece, 

whether it’s an email, web page, sales script, video, pay-per-click ad, or anything else, should be 

carefully tracked for results. Those pieces that do well can be repeated over and over. And they 

can be leveraged even further by modeling them for your future marketing pieces. 

Adopting this optimization mindset cuts the time it takes to create new marketing, builds on 

proven successes you’ve already had, and greatly increases the likelihood of any new marketing 

piece being successful. That is true leverage. 

Expansion Point #2 – you can take the elements of any successful marketing campaign and 

use them to create a new campaign. And you can do this with your own campaigns, by hiring 

copywriters to create new campaigns or with other companies’ campaigns. 

What you want to do when using other companies’ campaigns is model the concepts, not 

duplicate the copy word-for-word, which would be a violation of copyright laws. However, you 

can take any headline, subject line, hook, offer, copy appeal, pricing structure, packaging, 

guarantee or any other element and model them in your own ads. 

Expansion Point #3 – you can license your proven marketing campaigns to ad agencies or 

marketing consultants to use in their businesses. I’ve personally done this with 14 of my own 

proven marketing campaigns, receiving $17,500 plus a percentage of the profits for their use. 

Plus, this is an annually renewable fee, so it creates a substantial, ongoing revenue stream. 


The advantage to ad agencies and marketing consultants who license these campaigns from 

me is that they don’t have to go through all the work and expense of creating, testing, and fine 

tuning these campaigns. Plus, they receive complete marketing materials for selling the 

campaigns. So they can just plug in the system and start making money immediately – and they 

will have some very happy clients who will become repeat clients and refer other business. 

Optimization Play #6 – Distribution channels 

This is a very innovative play, but at the same time, not everyone will be interested in it. 

However, I want to show it to you to demonstrate just how expansive profit optimization 

strategies can be, whether or not you choose to use it. And if you do choose to use it, this play 

is a great way to add a lucrative new profit center to your business. 

Any time you’ve established a strong business relationship with distribution channels such 

as vendors, associations, large corporations, organizations or agencies, you have a valuable 

asset that can be leveraged. 

For example, one of my clients is a former high-ranking military officer with certification to 

do business with various arms of the military. This type of certification can take years to be 

approved for, which prevents most companies from doing business with the military. 

My client could leverage this distribution channel by becoming an agent for companies with 

good products that fit the military’s needs – including a massive opportunity to place consumer 

products in the military’s retail outlets on all bases, commonly called a PX. 

By acting as an agent, my client could take a commission of 20% to 30%, generate millions 

of dollars in sales for his clients that they wouldn’t see without this, and everyone would be 

happy. This could be an additional profit center for his business, or done properly, it could 

become a highly profitable business on its own. 

I have another client who just signed a deal to provide a branded food product to the 

National Hockey League. That contract will be worth millions, but they could double or triple 

those millions by acting as a consultant or agent for other companies who would like to place 

their products with the NHL but have no idea how to navigate the process. 

Want to apply this strategy as a consultant? All you have to do is find companies that have 

these types of distribution channels that they use in their own business and help them broker 

deals to bring other companies into the sales process. In exchange, you get a nice up front 

retainer and an ongoing share of the profits for bringing your knowledge to the deal. 

As you can see, once you apply a profit optimization mindset to this, the opportunities are 

practically endless. 

One of my greatest missed opportunities. When my partners and I sold our software 

company about 10 years ago, one of the factors that made our company so attractive to those 

looking to acquire us was that we had contracts or meetings with many Fortune 500 


companies, including Ford Motor Company, Deloitte Consulting, McDonalds, Amgen, and IBM. 

The way I generated those relationships was by using the same partnering process I covered 

earlier to place my skateboard toy. But once our software company was sold, I made a 

monumental error. 

The market for our testing software was the online learning space, a multi-billion dollar 

industry. In addition to more accurate testing, all of these Fortune 500 clients had many other 

needs in the online learning space. 

I could have easily surveyed them to discover what their most important needs were, then 

found companies with solutions for those needs and acted as an agent to get those companies 

sales appointments. In exchange, I would have received a retainer plus an ongoing share of the 

profits. 

But I was so involved with other new ideas I had at the time that I didn’t even consider this 

opportunity. I hate to think how much money this error cost me! 

Optimization Play #7 – Upsells 

Now we come to one of my absolute favorite Optimization Plays. That’s because upsells are 

probably the easiest way possible to build predictable profit growth into your business, year 

after year. And they are so easy to use, that you could have an upsell working for you within 30 

minutes of finishing this report. 

But let me be very candid with you – almost no one uses upsells! And because upsells are so 

easy and so reliable, I have no idea why more companies don’t take advantage of this 

exceptional way to grow your profits immediately. 

So let’s put an end to that. I’ll show you here exactly how upsells work so you can start 

using them as soon as you’re done reading this. 

Here goes! 

The strategy behind using an upsell is simple: a person is never more inclined to purchase 

again than when they are holding their credit card in their hand (physically or virtually) and 

already buying something. There’s a principle that drives the success of direct mail called RFM, 

which stands for “Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value”. 

Simply put, decades of studies have proven that the person most likely to buy again is 

someone who has made a recent purchase. The second most likely is someone who frequently 

purchases from you or frequently purchases products similar to yours. And the third most likely 

to buy again is someone who has purchased a higher priced product (monetary value) than 

other customers. 

The important point for applying this principle to upsells is leveraging the fact that the 


person MOST likely to buy again is someone who has recently made a purchase. And you can’t 

get any more recent than when a customer has just made a purchase and they still have their 

credit in their hand. 

So that’s the first principle in effectively using upsells. The offer of an additional item must 

be made after the initial purchase, not during that purchase. 

The second principle of effective upsells (and there are only two principles) is that once the 

purchase has been completed, you immediately offer your customer a great deal on a second 

item. Easy, right? 

Now, this can be done in person in a brick and mortar store, online, over the phone, with 

sales in the field – anywhere a sale is being made. 

The magic word for doubling the success of your upsells. There is one simple word that will 

have an almost magical effect on how many people choose to accept your upsell. And that 

word is… drum roll please… because. 

In his landmark book “Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion”, Dr. Robert Cialdini reports 

how a massive study his team conducted discovered that when a researcher asked a stranger 

for a favor, the stranger was far more likely to grant the favor if they were given a reason why. 

And it almost didn’t matter what that reason was. 

But here’s the real shocker. When the reason was accompanied by the word “because”, the 

favor was granted as much as 70% more often! And this remained consistent over the entire 

period of time that the study was conducted. 

So here’s how you can apply this knowledge to your upsells. As soon as your customer has 

completed a purchase, your offer should sound something like this: 

“Because you’ve purchased one of our most popular lines of shoes, we’d like to offer you a 

second pair in another color for 30% off the normal price.” 

“Because we’re celebrating our 14th year of being in business, we’d like to offer you a 

second pair of shoes in another color for 30% off the normal price.” 

“Because we’re conducting a special market test, we’d like to offer you a second pair of 

shoes in another color for 30% off the normal price.” 

As you can see, the reason why doesn’t have to be of massive importance, it just has to be 

there. And when it’s this easy to use and you can increase the number of people who accept 

your upsell by as much as 70% by giving a reason why that incorporates the word “because”, 

there’s no excuse for not taking advantage of it. 

More examples of upsells in action. As I said, upsells can be used in any business and in any 

buying environment. Here are a few specific examples to get you thinking about how to best 

use upsells in your business. 


A manufacturer of heavy machinery could offer an extended warranty with deeper 

discounts for each year added to the warranty. Or a pre-purchased card for replacement 

parts such as filters and fuel lines that aren’t covered by a warranty. 

A company that offers leadership training for business managers could offer additional 

training programs on related topics at a discount, group or one-to-one coaching at a 

discount, a special networking or private social network with other managers, and much 

more. 

A restaurant should always offer appetizers, dessert, or beverages as an upsell. For 

example, many people would love to order dessert but feel guilty about the additional 

calories. 

How about offering half portions of all desserts with your wait staff using this pitch, 

“Because we know so many people are counting calories these days, we now offer half 

portions of desserts. So you get half the calories at half the cost, but 100% of the 

enjoyment”. I can guarantee you that any restaurant making an offer like this can count 

on seeing their dessert sales soar. 

Also, as I mentioned earlier, any upsell can be offered in any buying situation. You can offer 

upsells in your store, on the phone, online, or through your sales staff. Because upsells are so 

easy to incorporate into the sales process, they are ideal for any buying situation. 

The bottom line is this. Whatever product or service you sell, you can offer more of that 

same product at a discounted rate as your upsell or other complimentary products. The upsell 

items you offer are only limited by your imagination. 

The eye-opening math of upsells. Still not convinced to start using upsells in your business? 

Then let’s take a look at some simple math that should change your mind. 

I mentioned earlier that upsells are the easiest and most predictable way to increase your 

profits. I’ve already demonstrated how easy they are to implement, now let’s take a look at 

how you can use them to create predictable increases in your profits year after year. 

Upsells are a function of the numbers. For every 100 customers you offer your upsell to, a 

certain percentage of them will take you up on your offer. That percentage can range anywhere 

from 25% to 80% depending on how appealing your upsell item is. 

For this example, let’s use a number toward the lower end of the range and assume that 

30% of your customers take you up on your upsell offer. Here’s what the math looks like – and 

I’ll use round numbers to keep this easy to understand. 

If 30% of all buyers purchase your upsell item, then for every 100 sales you make, 30 of 

those sales will include the upsell item. Next, let’s say that your upsell item costs $50 and $30 

of that is profit. So for these 100 sales, with 30 people taking your upsell, your additional profit 

comes to $900 (30 sales X $30 profit). 


That means that for every 100 sales you make, each sale has an average profit increase of 

$9 ($900 / 100 sales). So if you make 2,000 sales each year of this product line, you’ve 

automatically increased your profit by $18,000. And it didn’t cost you a penny to do this. 

Next, if you have a total of 6 product lines and you generate this same increase for all of 

them, you’ve now grown your profits by $108,000 per year. And this can be repeated for many 

years to come like clockwork. 

Once you grasp this simple math and also recognize how easy it is to incorporate upsells 

into your sales process, why would anyone even consider passing up such a predictable way of 

growing their profits? 

Optimization Play #8 – Geographical and cultural understanding 

Let’s close these examples with another profit optimization strategy that may not apply to 

everyone. But when it does, it can be very lucrative. And even if it doesn’t, this will help you 

begin to think much more expansively about ways to leverage your own assets. 

This is an example of the sheer ingenuity of one of my students in creating a model that 

anyone can apply. Plus, he initially applied this strategy and made hundreds of thousands of 

dollars with it when he was just 19 years old. 

One of his strengths is that he speaks a number of languages fluently. And he realized this 

gave him a tremendous advantage that few other entrepreneurs have. 

The way he leveraged this strength was to find some of the top-selling training programs in 

the United States and strike licensing deals to distribute them in other countries. He was able to 

obtain the rights to a number of high-profile training programs without any upfront payment 

because he was going to invest considerable time in translating them. 

He then focused on two main geographical areas, each with a different language and with 

sizable markets for the types of training programs he was offering. By translating these training 

programs into two different languages, which required a deep knowledge of each culture’s 

slang as there is usually industry or geographical slang involved in any training program, he was 

able to sell millions of dollars worth of these programs in his first year. And his share of the 

proceeds was in the high 6-figure range. 

That’s applying ingenuity and the power of leveraging assets at its best! 

Another friend of mine did something similar, but strictly from a cultural standpoint. When 

the initial trend of home gym equipment first hit, he realized that while it was huge in the 

United States, it had not yet reached his home country of Canada. 

So he took a trip to California and visited every home gym equipment retailer he could find. 

He talked to the owners and made notes on what sold best, what forms of marketing worked 

best, which products were the most profitable, etc. 


He then transported this cultural phenomena to Canada, opening the first chain of home 

gym retail stores in the country. It was wildly successful and he later sold the business to a 

major Fortune 500 company. 

Anyone can apply this profit optimization play, starting on a small scale. There are always 

cultural and geographical “firsts” in any country that can easily be transported to dozens of 

other countries. All it takes is keeping an eye out for products and trends with universal value, 

then using an expansive optimization mindset to figure out the best ways to transport these 

assets to other countries or even other areas of your own country. 

And you can also use this strategy to find new products or services to add to your own 

business. You can leverage their proven track record elsewhere to test them in your own 

location. If they sell well, you can either license or import them or even create your own version 

for your market. 

Why you have no cost, no risk and nothing but upside potential 

when you apply profit optimization strategies to your business 

With nearly all 42 of the profit optimization strategies I listed above, you never have any 

cost or risk involved. That’s because every asset you’re going to optimize – whether they are 

your own or the assets of other companies – already exist. So there is no cost to develop them 

or to pay outside vendors to develop them for you. 

In addition, these assets already have a proven track record. So the risk of them not 

performing even better when you optimize them is nearly eliminated. But even in the few cases 

where an optimization strategy doesn’t work as well as planned, you really haven’t lost 

anything other than a small amount of your time. 

So I want to make sure you understand the immense power of adding new profits to your 

business where there’s nothing required other than a small investment of your time. And as 

you can see from the examples I’ve given you, even the amount of time you invest is kept to the 

bare minimum. 

I’ll close here by summarizing two critical points that will serve you well for years to come: 

FIRST – Without any cost or risk, the majority of the proceeds you generate with profit 

optimization are pure profit. Your overhead costs are already covered by your core business. 

And since you are leveraging and amplifying assets you already have, but in new and highly 

profitable ways, you don’t have to buy traffic, pay for new marketing pieces, hire additional 

staff or pay for anything else that’s normally required to start a new project from scratch. 

SECOND – Because you aren’t required to invest heavily in any project, you can have 

multiple asset optimization projects running or in the works at the same time. The only real 

limitation is your time or your staff’s time. So this is a much more efficient way to increase your 

profits than constantly focusing on the next new “big thing”. 


Conclusion 

What I’ve shown you in this report are just some of the ways profit optimization can be 

used in any business. And why the overall concept of profit optimization is such a valuable way 

to add new profits to your business with no cost and no risk. 

I hope this has opened your eyes to dozens of opportunities that exist right now within your 

business. Opportunities that take just a small amount of time to capitalize on. 

And what I hope most of all is that you will begin to take advantage of these opportunities 

right away. As you’ve seen, this is easy to do. Just take one or two of the examples I gave you 

and apply it to your own business. I know that when you do, you’ll be surprised in the best way 

possible by your results. 


About Bob Serling 

Bob Serling is a 30-year marketing veteran and the founder of Profit 

Alchemy, Inc. His innovative take on marketing has helped hundreds of 

clients get exceptional results with their marketing. 

Bob is a featured marketing columnist for Success Magazine… invented a 

skateboard toy featuring Tony Hawk’s branding that was sold in toy stores 

and department stores all over the world… co-created and marketed 

advanced assessment software currently being used by many Fortune 500 

companies… created a one-and-a-half page prospecting letter for a client that landed an 

agreement for a $25 million project by being sent to just one prospect… and much more. 

He’s perhaps best known for having pioneered a proprietary, systematic approach to 

doubling any company’s profits with no cost and no risk, which he focuses on with all his 

clients. Bob helps clients recognize that regardless of what business you’re in, the most direct 

path to multiplying your profits is to leverage the assets you already have. 

He then uses his proprietary marketing process to help them drive more and better 

qualified traffic, convert a much higher percentage of prospects to paying customers, increase 

the amount of every sale, and optimize their profits in a number of other ways – all with no cost 

and no risk. 

Bob offers a free Profit Optimization Review to businesses with annual revenue of $200,000 

or more to determine the best ways for you to optimize your profits. To get more details and 

request your complimentary review, please visit: 

http://www.ProfitAlchemy.com/opt-review

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